Conduct Determines Legal Ownership
When a property is owned by two people as joint tenants (where the title to the property is owned by each of them, so that if one dies, the other inherits the property by survivorship), each of them is considered…
Decision Not Violation of Natural Justice
When an adjudicator in a construction dispute gives a ruling, the decision can only be appealed on a limited number of grounds. One of these is ‘breach of natural justice’, which means that the adjudicator’s decision is so obviously flawed…
Unauthorised Database Use to Cost Companies
Creating a commercial database and keeping it up to date is an expensive business and owners of such databases often take precautions to make sure they are not used without permission. One method of doing this is for the owners…
Sisters Lose Battle Over Father’s Estate
Three sisters who challenged their late father’s will have lost their battle at the High Court. The will was made the day George Wharton, who was suffering from terminal cancer, was discharged from hospital, in anticipation of his marriage to…
Who Gives You Advice is Important
When a financial services company went into administration and came under investigation by the Financial Services Authority (FSA), the emails of one of its directors were copied by the FSA, which wished to use them in evidence. The FSA sought…
Lotto Win Not Part of Family Assets
A court ruling that a spouse’s lottery winnings were not ‘matrimonial property’ so were not subject to the usual rule of equal division between the spouses when the marriage broke up received much publicity recently. The normal rule on divorce…
Landlords Lazy Over Cost Control
According to a recent ‘Which?’ report, landlords are lazy when it comes to making sure that costs such as insurance premiums and the like, that are passed on to their tenants, represent good value for money. In some cases, it…
Buyer Beware Principle Still Applies
A recent case in the Court of Appeal shows that ‘buyer beware’ is still a valid principle. Just because someone is paid for introducing you to someone else does not necessarily impose on them a duty to inform you of…
Beware What You Say on the Web!
The laws relating to defamation apply just as much to material posted on the Internet as they do to articles in newspapers and magazines. It is therefore risky to post comments that can be construed as defamatory on the Internet…